RE: jurisdiction language

["Richard Jasper" <richardj@library.tmc.edu>]

Forgive me if I'm belaboring the obvious (but it's one of the things I'm
good at doing!):

I think it's worth remembering that part of our role as librarians is to
do what we can to persuade our local decision-makers to be flexible. When
I was at my previous institution I always felt obliged to tell the vendor
up front what was or wasn't likely to fly with the University Counsel's
office -- and I was always willing to to ASK my counsel if the vendor came
back and said, "nope, sorry, we gotta have it."

In this case, the fact that most state institutions aren't willing to
commit themselves to arbitration doesn't mean that a private institution
(you're at Georgetown?) won't. For that matter, as I understand NOT
specifying the governing law doesn't preclude your institution from going
to court in your local jurisdiction, nor does it preclude the French
publisher from going to court in Paris. It just means that the two parties
haven't agreed in advance whose court has jurisdiction.

The other basic:

Sometimes we just have to walk away from a product if we can't persuade
the powers that be or the seller of the product to come to terms. They may
be upsetting for our faculty and students who really want the product, but
unless YOU are making the University policy with respect to licenses for
online resources you have to be willing to remind people that its not YOUR
decision.

Good luck, either way.

Richard P. Jasper, M.Ln.
Houston, Texas